Banking credit to the private sector in Latin America has on average increased by 7 percent of GDP from primo 2004 to ultimo 2011, with real credit in some countries growing by up to 20 percent per year. This paper documents and analyzes the patterns of credit growth in 18 countries in Latin...

We study the history of terms-of-trade booms (during 1970–2012), with a focus on Latin America, through the prisms of a simple metric that quantifies the associated income windfall. We also document saving patterns during these episodes and propose a measure of how much of the income windfall...

This paper provides an analysis of the cyclical stance of fiscal policy in Latin America. Its contributions include developing a new measure of the cyclicality of fiscal policy, careful analysis of the statistical significance of results, and accounting for the effect of commodity prices on...

Highly favorable external conditions have helped Latin America strengthen its economic fundamentals over the last decade. But, has the region built enough buffers to guard itself from a weakening of the external environment? This paper addresses this question by developing a simple framework...

This paper analyzes common economic patterns across countries and economic sectors in Latin America, East Asia and Europe for the period 1970-94 by means of an error-components model that decomposes real value added growth in each country into common international effects, sector-specific...

This paper examines capital adjustment patterns using two large and largely novel data sets from the manufacturing sectors of Colombia and Mexico. The findings show that investment patterns in these countries resemble those reported for the United States to a surprising extent. Capital...

Latin America was hit hard by Covid-19, both in terms of lives and livelihoods. Early lockdowns in the second quarter of 2020 prevented an explosion of deaths at the time but did not stop the pandemic from later wreaking havoc in the region. This paper investigates the dynamics of pandemics in...

Over the last decade China’s investment in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has increased substantially in volume and become more diversified from natural resources to other industries. Using cross-border mergers and acquisitions data, we demonstrate that since mid-2010s China’s...

Despite some improvement since 2011, Latin America and the Caribbean continue to lag behind other regions in terms of financial inclusion. There is no clear evidence that fintech developments have supported greater financial inclusion in LAC, contrary to what has been observed elsewhere in the...

This paper revisits the competitive environment of the banking system in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and investigates the early impact of fintech development in the region thus far. Against the backdrop of high net interest margins (NIMs) and limited financial depth in the region,...